Monthly Archives: November 2010

For the record, we mean to post something in this blog of craziness every day, but… things have been a little crazy lately. And on top of the high level of ambient insanity, in case November isn’t a stupid enough month, I’ve been attempting to write fifty thousand words before it’s out.

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, as the Japanese-style acronym has it, is a really freaking stupid thing to do. (And I say this with the most enthusiasm and love possible, but that’s a rant for another post.) The salient point here is that you’re trying to write a novel in a month. You get so deep into your putative novel that you can’t see it from the outside anymore, and then, at times like this when it’s past midnight and you’ve had too much caffeine, that you blink at the page and wonder if what you just wrote actually makes any sense.

That’s what just happened to me. To sum up the background, quickly: this insane thing I’m writing features three characters, none of whom have known each other for more than a month, and one of them barely at all, are snowed into a castle with no way to get out. There’s magic and stuff, and a whole lot more to it, but that’s the basic idea. Anyway, I was sitting here writing this weirdly tense emotional scene, and it suddenly hit me- these two characters have known each other for a week at most. Can they really be having this intense conversation, sharing their most secret worries? Is this even plausible?

And then I remembered that YCTC, the summer camp that saved my life back when I was sixteen, was three weeks long, and by the end of the first week we’d all made some of the best friends of our lives. By the end of the first week of my freshman year of college, I found myself in a nucleus of people that would be basically inseparable for the rest of the year. I met my sort-of-boyfriend (it’s a long story) during a show that only rehearsed for a week, and that was three years ago. When you throw people together in a new environment, a new situation, they’ll find ways to bond. They’ll find things they have in common, and things they don’t have in common, and they’ll go delirious with cabin fever together, and when they come out the other side.. who knows?

So I’m not going to worry about that scene too much. …Speaking of which, I’d better get back to that. I have at least five hundred more words to write tonight.

So it’s- you know, that week. The week that, usually, I hate being a woman with every tiny fiber of my mad little soul. I mean, I really hate it. I feel physically disgusting and spiritually unclean and I don’t want anyone to even touch me. And I complain as a coping mechanism, so everyone in a three-mile radius knows just how much I hate it.

Not anymore.

A few weeks ago- and I don’t even remember the circumstances of this conversation anymore, but Ian and Lanthir say I was talking to both of them- I decided I was tired of spending a quarter of my life hating my body, hating my assigned sex, and hating myself. We’d had many discussions ranting about how menstruation, as a societal construct, is so annoyingly ~feminine~, and how some of us who have to put up with it don’t want to have to buy pastel-colored pads and spend a week being stereotypically- and negatively- womanly. You know what I mean- hormonal, bitchy, full of mood swings, prone to crying and eating lots of chocolate, that whole shebang. And I realized, during all this ranting, that I’m never more unhappy with my female body than when I’m bleeding from parts of it.

And then I thought, well, instead of spending the week wishing I were a man, maybe I can be one. Put the “men” in menstruation, sort of thing. You know that saying about never trusting something that bleeds for a week and doesn’t die, well, I’m deciding that something that can do that is badass. And hey, why shouldn’t menstruation be a strong and manly time? It is a warrior week! A week of blood and rage!

So this week, my first official Blood and Rage Week, I’m reclaiming my masculinity. I’m going to wear pants and be enthusiastic as hell and get lots of stuff done while I’m not worrying about that pesky sex drive getting in the way. And, okay, I’m still going to complain when the back pain kicks in, because a warrior doesn’t have to be a stoic. But it’s day two and I don’t hate my body, so I’m calling it a good start.

If you’ve happened upon this blog, you are most likely wondering who the hell we are and what we think we stand for. I’d like to answer all those questions, and more, but what you get out of me may well turn out to be a bit vague. We’re a lot of people, and we stand for a lot of things, after all.

But let’s start with something simple: our name.

“Going a-gatewards” is an obscure bit of vanishing English, an archaic turn of phrase which once referred to the act of accompanying a traveler part of the way home. While there’s little physical traveling involved, that is essentially what we’re trying to do here. As the notorious Sonny Vincent said in his interview with Coilhouse, “the kids that dig deeper are cooler.” Going A-Gatewards is just some ground for digging. Our ever-growing collective is laying down a bit of ground-work, and we’re leaving it to you to go someplace with it.

About our contributors:

D.F. Savage, crackpot visionary behind this whole hairbrained scheme, is not always available for comment, but when he is, he prefers it verbose and profane. He likes a beer with breakfast because lucidity may be nice, but brilliance is key, and you must remember he is not shouting, he simply thinks best at a higher volume. This frigid little nomadic queer takes his life lessons from Aaron Sorkin and still wants to be Darth Vader when he grows up. He’s got a thing for misanthropes and malcontents and if you don’t see the appeal of trouble-making, scatterbrained, socially inept young geniuses in slovenly apartments, know he’s just waiting for the Stockholm’s to kick in.

Rin Barton is an out-of-work actor, Shakespeare nerd, grad school dropout, freelance sorcerer, internet bum, future crazy cat lady, and wanna-be YouTube celebrity. She runs the Going A-Gatewards Twitter feed, and in her spare time she writes novels, medleys songs that don’t go together, genderbends, and wears as many yellow things as possible.

Lanthir Calendaeis a potter, a pornographer, an occasional editor, and a raving lunatic. This bizarre little genderqueer Elf would rather be out wandering the wilderness right now, but is still stuck in school. They attempts to solve all of their problems with music, art and dance, which seems to be going shockingly well so far. In their spare time, Lanthir enjoys playing flute along with techno music, the deductive psychoanalysis of fictional characters, and going on long road trips living out of their truck.

Steel Lucy is the one weird fairy your Catholic priest tried to exorcise a few too many times, so your mother let you keep her as an imaginary best friend. She forgives you for the broken vase blame, by the way. On her days not spent trying to build a portal into the steampunk universe she once discovered on a mind-altering trip, she reminisces about the days when living out of a beat up buick was THE option, and how she really should’ve taken that bassist gig. She writes love poetry to mad scientists, and believes she will capture one for experimentation of the most delicious sort.